BOX OFFICE: AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON Falls Short Of THE AVENGERS' Opening Weekend
A number of factors including the Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao fight took a bite out of Avengers: Age of Ultron yesterday, and the sequel will now come in behind the first movie with the second largest opening weekend of all-time. However, it's also hit the $600 million mark worldwide!
Despite some early estimations which indicated that Avengers: Age of Ultron might reach upwards of $230 million this weekend, the sequel has in fact opened with an impresive $187.7 million. That gives it the second highest opening of all-time behind The Avengers (which took $207.4 million back in 2012), but the majority of box office analysts actually believed it would always finish on or below that mark. The higher estimations didn't start doing the rounds until just a few days ago.
With this and the $439 million it's taken overseason, Avengers: Age of Ultron has already acculumalated $627 million in around 10 days of release. It still hasn't opened in China either, while there are weeks to go before we'll get a proper idea of where it will finish. $1 billion is obviously guaranteed, meaning it joins The Avengers and Iron Man 3. It's another hit for Marvel Studios!
So, why didn't the sequel do quite as well as initially expected? The Mayweather/Pacquiao fight is a huge contributing factor, with one rival studio executive telling The Hollywood Reporter: "The fight dinged all films across the board. The numbers on Ultron are still phenomenal but definitely less than they would have been," said one rival studio executive. It was also announced today that Furious 7 has become the fourth highest grossing movie of all-time with $1.4 billion. It should be very interesting to see if Avengers: Age of Ultron ends up topping that, and whether it has the staying power to beat The Avengers. How many times did you guys watch the movie this weekend?